Page 112 of Writing Mr. Wrong

And there it was. One moment she was swimming, head down, arms churning, and then the boat was in front of her. A few more long strokes brought her up beside it, where she grabbed on to a net and looked up…

Into the barrel of a rifle.

Everything inside her convulsed as an inner voice screamed that she’d forgotten this part. She’d been worrying about sharks when the real danger was that she was swimming to a boat while having no idea who was on it.

She looked up, but the rising sun meant she couldn’t see anything except a figure behind the gun. A man snapped in something that might have been Spanish, might have been Portuguese, oh hell, she couldn’t even tell right now, all her attention on that barrel.

“Pl-please,” she said, catching her breath. “Our boat…” She waved in the general direction. “Broke down. Radio…” Another gasping breath. “Not working. Stranded.”

A murmur of voices. Could they understand her? Why the hellhadn’t she studied a brief smattering of tourist Spanish before going on vacation?

Well, because she thought she’d be traveling to someplace with snow, someplace in Canada.

“Por favor,” she said, and that exhausted her Spanish. She couldn’t even remember whether she knew the word for help.

“Up,” the man’s voice said, and a rope ladder descended.

Gemma hesitated. Did she really want to enter a boat bearing men with guns? No, not really, but the alternative was drowning, because she didn’t have the strength to swim back.

She grabbed the ladder and began to climb. After two rungs, something jerked the ladder from below, and a babble of angry words shot from above.

Gemma looked down… to see Mason’s dark head below her as he held the ladder, panting hard, his arms wobbling from the long swim.

Had she really expected him to stay behind? To be honest, she hadn’t thought about it, just like she hadn’t thought about what to expect from this boat.

“Off!” a man snapped from above. “You! Off!”

Gemma twisted. “Mace? Are you okay staying there?”

“Wh—?” His breath came ragged. “What?”

“I need you to stay down there while I handle this.”

He looked up, and that must have been when he saw the gun, because he let out a string of curses and then grabbed her ankle.

“I’ll talk to them,” he said.

“Yeah, they don’t want the big scary guy on their boat, Mace. I need to handle this. Please.” She lowered her voice. “Just let me talk to them. You’ll be right there.”

His eyes narrowed, but his grip eased on her ankle. He never quite let go, as if he couldn’t bring himself to do that, yet he did let her pull from his grasp. When she resumed climbing, though, he called up something in Spanish, falteringly, but certainly better than she could have managed.

The man answered, and Mason said something else.

Please don’t be threatening him, Mace.

He wasn’t. She could tell by his tone that he was calmly explaining, and as she climbed onto the deck, she saw the two people there—a man and a woman, both a little older than her, the man holding an obviously old rifle, the barrel no longer pointed at her but still raised.

Because she was a stranger who’d latched on to the side of their fishing boat.

“Perdón,” she said, the word coming to her as she hoped it was right and not just some Spanish word close to “pardon.” She added, “I’m sorry. We’re stranded.”

Mason called up in more broken Spanish. The woman shook her head, rolling her eyes and then saying, “Tourists. You go out into the water without even a working radio.”

“It was an emergency,” Gemma said. “We were supposed to be picked up this morning for our flight and no one came. May my, uh, boyfriend come up, please? We swam a long way.”

The man shook his head, which she feared meant no, but he called down, “Up.” The head shake was just for the reckless tourists. Then Mason crested the side, and the man stepped back, gun rising as he realized how big Mason was.

“Stay there,” Gemma said, motioning to Mason. “Please.”

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